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By This Poet

I put the bookmark in the page after Lincoln’s
silence during the 1860 campaign, after no one
in the Gulf States cast a single vote for him,
then march off to the car, carseat in tow, drive on
cruise, mainly, to the site in Durham where Sherman
coaxed the Southern general—Johnston—
to submit twice, sign twice. The six hundred thousand
dead were like the shucks inside the reconstructed
bed, the smoke the chimney slewed, the clayish mud.
In the museum, name-tagged women watch our daughter,
four months here, while we investigate the flags
with gunshot holes, the uniforms with gunshot holes,
the shells of the Union Army with three rings, the shells
of the Confederate’s with two. We take our daughter
to the filmstrip, where she sleeps through
the stills of uniformed corpses in ditches and cries
at war’s end, one flag for all these states. We ride,
strapped, to the Greek restaurant known for its sauces
and lamb, stroll inside the tobacco warehouse transformed
into a mall, each glass pane so large a truck
could drive through and pick up brightleaf to ship.
They say this section profited when South met North
and troops took in the smoke of this leaf, spreading
by word of mouth the flavor, until the profits
were so large owners began to donate. In the antique store
we happen upon a map my father might love
of Ireland before division, just as it appeared
when he was born, the north a section, not another country,
Ulster’s counties awash in the orange the mapmakers
stained it. But we can’t commit to buy for this price,
or prevent our daughter from falling asleep as we discuss
facts the map makes clear: battles marked in bold,
our side losing again and again, the Flight of the Earls,
Vinegar Hill, the Battle of the Boyne, and we donate
a moment during the drive home to feel
the weight of the centuries’ dead, almost cry for all
those men who gave their skin to the ground so young,
so young brought their lips to earth and let their mouths
cave in, accept the soil as their voice. We did not wake
our girl through this. Let her sleep, we said.